The budget has evoked ‘mixed’ response: the BJP hails it, the opposition flays it.
The BBMP on Thursday presented the budget for the year 2012-13, targeting a revenue of Rs9,288.95 crore and plans to spend Rs9,498.9 crore for various infrastructure and welfare schemes during the year.
Presenting the budget at the BBMP council meeting, KA Muneendra Kumar, chairman of standing committee on taxation and finance, said the BBMP expects to collect Rs2,075.5 crore tax revenue and Rs1,915 .04 crore non-tax revenue, Rs1,887.35 crore government grants and Rs3,411.06 crore miscellaneous receipts during 2012-13.
Kumar said the total estimated expenditure during 2012-13 would be `9,498.90 crore, including `2,628.77 crore of revenue expenditure and `6,870.13 crore of capital expenditure. Overall surplus during 2012-13 is expected to be `1.8 crore.
The BBMP expects to collect `2,000 crore property tax (as against the target of `1,500 crore last year) during the year by bringing all apartment complexes, service apartments, paying guest houses under tax net.
“Action will be taken to collect property tax from left out properties. It is proposed to issue bio-metric based khata in the present year. All high-value properties will be surveyed under Geographic Information System (GIS) and will be revaluated to increase the property tax collection. Such properties will be monitored based on data in the GIS server,” he said.
Hoardings costlier
The budget proposes a 100% hike in advertisement fee along 30 roads and commercial areas and 50% hike along other roads. “Advertisement tax will be collected from hoardings in bus stands, pole kiosks, railway hoardings and other places. Overall it is expected to collect `75.5 crore as advertisement tax,” he said.
More in tax net
Here is bad news for traders and businessmen. The budget plans to bring around four lakh traders, as against 46,000 traders last year, under trade licence tax net. It proposes to collect `90 crore during this year. “The word ‘trade licence’ will henceforth be changed to ‘trade commencement certificate’ and online system will be introduced for the issue of trade commencement certificate. We have roped in NIC for this project. It is proposed to open 28 centres to issue trade commencement certificate. The certificates will be issued for three or five years as per the Sections 430 and 507 of KMC Act 1976,” he said.
The budget proposes to have a meeting with 12 telecom companies to collect `120 per metre of optical fibre cable. “All the BBMP properties will be assigned GIS-based PID numbers and it forms the basis for asset register. Evaluation of BBMP properties will be done based on asset register. The quoting of permanent road number will be made compulsory for applying OFC licences,” he said.
Stating that GIS-based road maintenance is in the final state and will be implemented in this fiscal, he said: “All the roads will be given a unique permanent number and quoting this number will be compulsory. Approval of proposals relating to roads, footpaths, drains improvement will be based on road history and quoting of unique road number. With this, complete road history will be maintained for all the roads in BBMP area.”
Disciplining staff
As part of reforms in general administration and to bring discipline among BBMP employees, the budget proposes to extend bio-metric attendance system to all BBMP zonal offices.
To keep an eye on training programmes for BBMP employees, it proposed to form a high-level official committee to monitor training programmes. It has also proposes to recruit 134 employees for the health department.
“A notification has been issued to recruit 89 people. A proposal has been sent to KPSC to issue notification for the recruitment of remaining 45 people,” he said.
Kits for corporators
The budget proposes to issue kits to all corporators. It would contain complete information of the respective ward - geographic area, population, details on property tax, BBMP property, roads, parks, street lights, ongoing projects and other information.
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